Transient phenomena hold many secrets because mankind has been unable to capture them at critical moments in time. Stop-action pictures for moving objects require either gating the light source onto an integrating detector (stroboscopic), or gating the detection of a continuous light source (shuttered). Developments in high-speed photodiode arrays, wide-band operational amplifiers, and multiplexed, multi-MHz analog-to-digital data converters integrated onto single, low-cost chips, have made continuous imagers having 103 pixels available for real-time imaging. However, at high frame rates, the available sensitivity of these detection systems can be significantly decreased.
X-ray movies of full-scale implosions are compared with calculations to certify the safety, security, and performance of the United States nuclear stockpile without nuclear testing and without compromising either the understanding of weapons or their expected performance. The X-rays are converted into visible light signals using scintillators in large mosaics of crystals, which are then viewed using high-speed cameras. Further uses for X-ray movies include basic materials science, with a focus on materials at high-dynamic pressure and the mechanisms of material failure, and high explosives and their performance parameters including equation-of-state parameters at high temperatures and pressures.
Other uses for high-speed cameras include work in the automotive industry for fuel-injection studies; the military industry for armor-penetration studies; and the aircraft industry for analyzing turbulent flows and jets.